


the hands that hold, the hands that cut

by Vellev



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Demisexuality, Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mind Manipulation, Scarification, Scars, but no gore, fucking fluffy as fuck, i tried my best tbh this is just too long for one goddamn sex scene, in which stormtroopers are not virgins, just let me be done with this monster, third person from finn's perspective, thirteen pages of gay shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:45:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vellev/pseuds/Vellev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the facts and the schedules Stormtroopers need to remember between endless reconditioning and mind wipes, they need to come up with creative, permanent ways of remembering anything worth remembering. Finn considers just what is worth remembering and why when he first gets naked with Poe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the hands that hold, the hands that cut

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the Kinkmeme: "With all the mind-wiping and reconditioning, Stormtroopers don’t have very reliable memories. The only way to ensure that they remember important things is to write themselves notes in code/using symbols … on their skin. By this time in his life, half of Finn’s body is covered in these permanent marks. So when Poe first sees Finn naked, that’s what he sees."
> 
> Again, unbetaed, so sorry for any errors. I also completely forgot the detail that Stormtroopers helmets display identification of other troopers, temperature, and other such things inside the helmet. So. Just ignore that that's a thing.

Within the First Order, where the troopers only have numbers to identify each other with, Finn had found other ways to identify his friends when only a smooth alloy mask stared back at him. Without a face to see, he learned to pick up on the smallest of gestures, the subtlest vocal cues. He could spot Slip having a hard day from ten yards away just from the way that he carried himself and the way he distributed his weight when he walked. He was good at it, too. People were definitely different heights, and rank factored in (it’s not like he couldn’t tell Captain Phasma was the Captain or anything like that), but from a distance it could be difficult to tell the many faceless armored statues from each other. 

Nines used to click his heels against the ground when he walked, stepping with his heels with confidence airing off of him. Now, after a particularly difficult re-conditioning session to stop him from doing just that, he walks on his toes, ball before heel so there’s no way he can produce the discouraged sound when he walks. 

He grew progressively better at observing the way their hands moved when in fitted black gloves. Nines had the longest fingers of all of them, with Finn in a close second. Finn’s were thicker, though, Nines a long stalk of a man under all his armor. After a mission they’d gone on, just orders to kill a few disorderlies, Phasma had ordered him to put on more muscle, and of course Nines had done his best to do it. His hands never changed, though, always the same.

Both Nine’s slim long fingers and Slips shorter, stubby ones were inevitably rotting on Jakku and Takodana. And Nines, Nines, Nines was by Finn’s hands itself. How could he ha-- 

“Finn? You still with me, buddy?” Poe says below him, and he turns his attention back down to the man he’s straddling, his thick hair losing its styled volume at Finn’s own fingertips.

Finn nods, a little embarrassed, and gives him a smile. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” He takes his hands from Poe’s hair, leaving it beautifully rustled, and places it over Poe’s fingers where they push the jacket off of Finn’s shoulders. “I was just thinking about your hands.”

He sees Poe look up at him, and then look down, laughing at first and then holding it back with a smile. “You’re--you’re really in love with me, aren’t you?”

Finn squints at that, confused. He’s flawless at picking up body cues, but faces? Expressions? The most basic social cues known to humans, and he knows so little about them. “Is that such a bad thing?”

Poe shakes his head, which should mean negative, but he’s still smiling. “No, no, it’s a fantastic thing. I can’t believe it, that’s all. Thinking about my hands, where the hell did they even find you?” 

Finn’s nearly able to explain that he’s not really certain, but then Poe’s pressing his lips back against his, and he’s back to turning all his attention, all his focus back on kissing him again. Kissing is more fun than he ever expecting. Troopers were allowed to have sex, there was nearly no way to avoid that among so many young people growing up in close quarters with each other. Anyway, with the General’s obsession with breeding a perfect soldier, he didn’t really mind much if any of the troopers got pregnant, it would be a pesky annoyance in their fighting skill, but they didn’t mind more young troopers to train. The First Order did not tolerate relationships, though. Love was only a liability in battle, every trooper needed to fight for the First Order, not themselves, and especially not each other. He’s not certain what feelings he harbored for Slip (it couldn’t be love, it was nowhere near as strong as how he feels for Poe) but even the way he defended him in their simulations made Phasma fear their connection. No more saving Slip. It all went with Hux’s beliefs on “biologic selection,” he called it, letting the weak die and not reproduce. And Slip, apparently, was weak. The runt always dies. 

And, well, Slip did die in the end, so he supposes it all worked out.

Poe makes a noise against his lips, and he takes it all back. He’s not all focused on the kiss, not at all.

“Listen, we don’t need to do this right now.” Poe says, drawing his lips away from Finn’s, and that’s when the ex-trooper knows he messed up. “It makes sense that you might not be ready, and there’s no reason to take it so fast.”

“I told you, I’m not a virgin!” Finn says, the words passing through his lips easily, having had this arguement with Poe countless times. Apparently, the Resistance thought the First Order was filled with sexually-repressed virgins. 

Poe’s hands leave his shoulders, and only then does Finn notice that the man worked the jacket off of him, and it now lays collapsed at the foot of the cot. The feeling at the pit of his stomach that he’s messed this up only grows more drastic. “That doesn’t mean we have to do this right now still.”

“I want to do this right now.” He says, and he prays that it doesn’t come out like he’s convincing himself. He’s not. He wants this, he deeply, deeply wants this, from the pit of his body. Poe is...doing it with love behind it, with emotion, it seems so much more appealing. The plain sex they used to have, with no emotional attachments, it seemed so bland and boring. Poe was, Poe was the secret ingredient, the love that hung heavy in the air between them changed everything. He wants Poe, he wants to feel how that’ll be with him, with the love. See his body underneath the orange jumpsuit, feel his flesh with no fear of the memories getting erased from his head. “I do. I want it, Poe.”

The pilot catches him in a kiss again, and this time Finn is expecting it, and this time, he’s as invested in it as he wishes he was before. He lets Poe’s talents envelope him, so there’s no way he can think about anything but the man underneath him. He likes it, really, when he doesn’t need to think about himself, when he can focus all of his attention on someone else. Being able to be pulled from his own thoughts can be comforting, especially when all there is to replace it with is the feeling of _love._

“Uh, huh? You want it?” Poe says underneath him, and that’s one of the wonderful things about Poe’s hands, they’re always everywhere, all around Finn’s body, touching him, feeling him, resting against him. At first, he didn’t know it was okay, but once Finn convinced him he was fine with it, the older man couldn’t keep his hands off of him, and just kept touching him. “You want me?”

“Kriff, yes, yes, I do, I one-thousand times do.” Finn says, barely willing to pull away enough to talk, too invested in the softness of Poe’s lips. 

They stay like that for a while, lip-locked and lips following each other like heat seeking torpedoes. 

They stay like that for _too_ long, even. That’s been their problem before, getting so distracted in their kissing that they forget to do the rest. Not that they need to, but even now is Finn hard and a little sweaty in his trousers, desperate to see what will happen next, how Poe will feel in his own hands, how it might feel to hold him while he loses himself. The man is always so sure of himself, and, from what he hear in the chamber with Kylo Ren, he was confident and spiteful even in the face of immense pain. He loves that Poe, but something makes him want to see Poe shudder and lose control, and at Finn’s hand no less. 

So, Finn takes the initiative, moving his hands down to Poe’s hips, resting against his body there before his fingers grasp the thin fabric of his worn shirt and pull it up above the man’s head. It interrupts the kiss a little prematurely (banthashit, they could kiss until the end of time if it were feasibly possible) but Poe doesn’t seem to mind based on the dilation of his pupils. Finn tosses the shirt somewhere, where he doesn’t pay attention to, not when he can finally get his hands on Poe’s chest. The man is more built than he’s expected just by touch, he’s got a good layering of muscles over his chest and arms. Finn spreads his fingers against the skin there, mapping out the dips and rises, trying to take in all the new data inputs into his mind. How warm he is, how soft he is, the slight sheen of sweat on his skin. 

He can see Poe looking up at him, so obviously turned on, and for once, Finn gets what feeling sexy means. He feels sexy, like he’s done something that’s only made Poe’s emotions stronger and better, and kriff, he’s doing this right, he’s hot.

Finn has the biggest smile on his face when he pushes Poe down so his back hits the bed. The man reclines easily, especially when he feels Finn reposition himself so his hard-on rubs against Poe’s pants. Then, he sees Poe’s lips part when Finn’s hands come to his own torso, to the hem of his own shirt, and pulls it off his body, the neck of the shirt getting caught on his head before he’s able to pull it off and drop it to the ground on top of his (Poe’s?) jacket. 

He’s still got a smile on his face, looking down at Poe, because they’re both half naked now, a gorgeous pair. He feels Poe’s hands come and rest against on his biceps, and he can feel the man’s eyes on him. He dips down to kiss him, and Poe does the touching thing again, where his hands just cover large territories of skin, touching him, feeling him, but shit, does it feel better without the extra layer of clothing between them. 

He returns the touches, but before he knows it Poe is drawing away from him, a difficult feat with his head pinned between Finn’s mouth and the cot below him. He ducks his head down, though, against Finn’s neck, and at first the man thinks he’s about to stop kissing there, but instead, Poe’s nose stay nuzzled against his neck, breathing heavily. After a few seconds, he hears a short, “Damn.”

Only then does he pull away, but Poe’s hands stay firm on his arms. He turns his attention there, and then. Oh, all his scars. 

There’s a long pause between them, both knowing what they were noticing about the patterns and symbols against Finn’s skin. 

“Did they do this to you?” The pilot finally says, his fingers seeming to have picked out a specific scar on the right side to fuss over, while the left one still scans over a couple of them, tracing the raised skin. 

Finn thinks about it. It’s been awhile since he last saw himself in a mirror. The scars cover a majority of his skin, though, a few scrawled in in Basic, a couple more in a couple other languages, but most in a secret tongue him and the FNs had devised for that specific purpose. A couple of the etched marks are artistic, all of those no longer even having any tints of pink fleshiness to them, just scarred over to match the brown of his skin naturally. Those more artistic ones are from before they taught them the Basic script, deep in their childhood. It was their own personal form of pictographs, nearly blended into their skin with the unsteady blade of youth. The newer ones are pinkish and rawer, and it’s easy to tell which ones are from what points in their lives. 

“I guess. We all did it.” Maybe he doesn’t understand Poe’s question correctly.

Did he ruin the mood? He never thought of his scars as ugly, not at all. The scars were, well. The scars were everything he knew. Every important little fact, either about the ship or about himself, everything he wanted to keep past the mind-swipes and the reconditioning. This was how troopers remembered well--anything. Some of them looked good too, not just random scars, but Basic words and drawings etched into his skin, reminding him of things that seemed important at one time. 

Poe must misunderstand him. “Oh, Finn.” The man says, and pushes himself up, so he’s not laying down on the bed anymore, but sitting and facing Finn. “We’ve got better medical than the First Order, far better. We can remove these, make them look just li--”

“No!” Finn can feel his heart sinking to the ground. Remove them? They can’t remove them. 

“No?” Poe questions, but he sounds genuine, like he has no interest in wiping Finn’s mind again. 

“Those are, I don’t want to forget.” Finn doesn’t even know how to explain it. Poe didn’t have any marks on his skin, a couple cuts, maybe a burn in a few places. Random and unplanned, though, no shapes or numbers or symbols. 

“I thought you wanted to forget the First Order.” Poe says, and Finn doesn’t blame him. It makes sense. From what Rey must’ve told him, Finn had been too focused on escaping the reach of the First Order, both physically and mentally. 

He can only shake his head. “I won’t let myself. What else is there?” He pauses, and yes, he’s going to need to explain this. “If I forget them completely, then there will be nothing else for me to remember. Anyway, with all the real memories they’ve stolen from me, I’m never letting another person take anything from my life and erase it.” He wants to remember everything from the map to Luke Skywalker to the feeling of Poe’s stubble against his chin when they kiss. He won’t allow himself to forget anything. 

“Memories?” Poe says, and his hands start searching out other scars, like the ones on his chest, engraved into skin, the other hand sloping down his back and exploring the multitude of raised markings decorating his back. 

Of course, it had occurred to Finn that not everyone in the galaxy etched symbols into their skin to remember things. Not everyone had their memories taken away so often and so easily that they _needed_ to do that. He never thought it would be strange, though, never bad. Just like writing a reminder in ink, but infinitely more permanent. Surely, with all of Poe’s ventures to the boundaries of the galaxy, _surely,_ the pilot must have come across something like this before. 

“They help us, Stormtroopers I mean, remember things that they might have made us forget. With the memory wipes and stuff, sometimes it’s hard to trust your own judgement and your own thoughts.” Paranoia, Jessika had called it. When he has to second guess every thought he has trying to understand if it’s really his own, or the replacement to something more deep and personal. She says that he’s paranoid, that he cannot trust his own thoughts, and therefore has trouble trusting himself, much less anyone else.

He doesn’t know what she means by that, though. He trusts Poe far more than he thinks he’s ever trusted himself. 

That’s how he knows that the man won’t try and erase his scars in his sleep, won’t make him forget. 

Poe opens his lips, and with how wet with spit they are, it sounds loud compared to the low humming of the room. “So, all of these tell a story?” Poe says.

Finn doesn’t get exactly what he’s asking. “Individually, each one does. Each represents, or says in some cases, things that I want to remember, or other people wanted me to remember for them.” He looks down at Poe, into the man’s eyes, and the flush of his cheeks. The pilot’s attention is still turned on the scars, the ones his fingers dabble across. “That one,” Finn says, and Poe’s eyes come up to meet him, as if being caught with his stares. “That was a reminder of one of my initial sleeping quarters before being stationed on Starkiller. Room 538. And the two below that, that’s the schedule of my duties.”

Poe turns his attention back on the scars, fingers outlining them. 

“Maybe that’s not the best example. That was less about the memory wipes, more something that was difficult to remember. I’d just grown so used to it, it was a thing all us bucketbrains did, it just seemed natural.” He pauses, and slides off of him, the coldness of the floor underneath his bare feet as he does. He sits down next to Poe on the bed, angling himself so he can show the lover his back. “This is the first one I ever got. It’s just my serial numbers, in basic. They brand them there, when you’re born, so they don’t mix us up. I also got that one on my arm when I was younger, so if I forgot my numbers then I could read them out.” Poe makes an uncomfortable face, though Finn can’t tell what at. “I’m making you uncomfortable.” Finn notices, proud of his identification of facial expressions, but not glad at what it meant.

“Well, yes, in a way. I just can’t believe...they _branded_ you?” Poe spits out, with--dare Finn admit it--disgust in his voice. He didn’t think it was...ugly, did he? Finn had never thought of it like that, sure, many of the scars were unsteady, but not their existence themselves, it was natural and necessary, he couldn’t imagine himself without them. How would he ever know he had a past at all without them?

He bites the blaster, though. Not happily. “Yes? I mean, they did.” He can feel how nervous and uneasy his own body language is. He’s not looking at Poe’s eyes anymore, this is never a thing he’s felt ashamed of before, never, and now the man that he trusts most is. Kriff. “It’s not a _bad_ thing. I never would have learned my numbers without it, really, they would be impossible to remember. Don’t tell me that you think they’re ugly.”

Poe looks at him for a good second. “No, no, not ugly at all.” He shakes his head. “I only dislike the idea that you need to have your past burned into your skin and always reminding you of what happened to you.”

Finn just shrugs in response. He can’t be mad about it, not when Poe’s looking up at him again, not when Poe said that they weren’t ugly. Finn can still be pretty now, these markings don’t change him in Poe’s eyes, not physically. “It’s better than the alternative. I want to remember, and it’s not just old ones either. I can’t just stop after my time with the first order, I. I gave myself a few other ones.” 

“Since you got here?” 

Finn nods. 

“About what? I mean, like. What did you write down?”

Finn thinks for a second. He’d given himself three within his time here, none on his back because he can’t reach there, and anyway, he doesn’t want to touch it with the large diagonal scar still healing across his back. They’d managed to help any damage to his spine, but he’d requested they not meddle with the scarring. It was, in a way, the biggest reminder he could get of his experience with Rey and Kylo Ren on the Starkiller base. That one would stay, and he would do his usual processes to let it scar over. 

“Here. I can show you.” He says, and brings his hands to his pants, starting to remove them. Then, his hands pause, remembering the situation they were in, (shirtless, on Poe’s cot, both still flushed and sweaty from their previous action) and the connotations of that. “That is, if you want to see.” 

He looks to Poe, and from the way the man is looking at him, he wants to see.

He stands up, and pulls the trousers down from off his hips, stepping out of them one foot at a time. It feels horribly unsexy, but honestly, he can’t even tell if he should still expect actual intercourse to happen from this interaction anymore. (He still feels like he messed this up. Somehow.) He feels terribly awkward standing there, just in his briefs and those alone. 

Poe helps, though, bringing his hands up and out to rest on Finn’s hips, and then pulling him closer. Then, Finn lets himself settle into the situation. They were both in Poe’s quarters, on his bed, both barely half naked. Poe pulls him close, and Finn moves in easily, dipping down to kiss him once more before explaining. 

As he does, he brings his hand down on top of Poe’s, manually moving his palm down from hip to thigh, before touching over a fleshy pink scar. This one had only just scarred over properly, the scabbing just having come off. “This one I made for Slip. And.” He brings the same hand up on his torso, until it lays on the side of his waist, over a raw, still scabbed part. “And this one, well. It’s in Basic, you can read what it says.”

Poe doesn’t read it, though, he brushes his fingers over the raised lettering, reading it with his hands. “Forn, Isk, Nern, Nern.” He says the letters aloud. “Finn.” He finally says, combining the letters again together. 

Finn looks down at him, and lets his lips spread out in a smile again. “I like it when you say my name.” 

“Finn.” Poe says again, and he’s got a smile as well, and when their lips come together, it’s two stupid grins crashing against each other, far too many teeth and far too much love.

Now, when Poe puts his fingers against Finn’s body, it’s with a purpose, it’s to read the print of his skin like a blind man reading raised script, like he’s memorizing his memories with every touch and every kiss.

The kiss is shorter this time, not so searching, not so infinite. This time, Finn has his purpose set out, and he lets his own hands guide him, lets his mind secure itself on the feeling of Poe’s hips and the warmth of his skin. He lets them stay sitting up, a natural position for the pilot, and they rock there for a while, like the warm up before the work-out. Finn feels the smoothness of Poe’s skin with his lips, mesmerized by just how unmarked and blank it is. He knows the man has many experiences, in theory, he was older, so he should have many more memories, many more experiences. And yet, his skin stayed plain and unmarked save for a few clumsy scratches and bruises, few so drastic to leave any impressive or notable scar.

And still, even those small, unnoticeable scars does Finn give the most attention when he lowers his body down Poe’s torso, kissing against the skin newly available to him. He sucked a few marks onto his collarbone, but he finds investigating Poe’s own scars so much more interesting, wondering what experiences they came from, and how they left the man scathed. He spends ample time investigating the sounds and facial expressions Poe made when nuzzles his neck with his nose, feeling the way he swallows and breathes beneath his skin. 

Finn’s hands don’t stop on his shoulders, though, making their way down Poe’s chest until he’s met with the buckle of his trousers. He undoes the metal, and slides the leather belt from around his waist, letting it fall on the ground off the bed somewhere near his jacket and shirt. Then, he undoes the button there, lips kissing against Poe’s scratchy jawline. “You’re sure you don’t find them ugly?” He says, fingers teasing at the zipper of his pants, drawing it down.

“They’re on you. How could they be ugly?” Poe says, clutching Finn’s face between his hands, and pulling him back to kiss him.

And the ex-Stormtrooper _swears_ he had a witty retort to that, but it slips away between wet lips and impassioned touches. He takes Poe’s cock from his pants, pulling his underwear down so they don’t get in the way. Steady strokes from base to tip, blindly touching with eyes closed in their kiss. Poe feels big in his hands, but then again, it’s so hard to correctly estimate things without seeing them.

When the kiss breaks apart, he’s not even ashamed in the way he stares down at Poe’s crotch, taking in the sight laid out before him. It _is_ pretty sizeable, well enough above average, but that isn’t what Finn thinks about. Aesthetically, it’s pleasing, and the glisten of wetness on the tip makes him want to put his tongue on it.

Another time, maybe. Now, he just enjoys pulling sounds from Poe, the way the man’s eyes close and open when he strokes him in a particular way. He brushes the droplets of pre-release away instead, in the way he knows feels good based on his own body. 

“Is this good?” Finn asks him in a low voice, faces so close if he goes above a whisper it’ll feel too loud to his own ears. 

Poe hums deep in his chest, and Finn can feel it against his lips where he aimlessly brushes them against jawline, neck, and mouth. “Fantastic.” He makes another noise--a sigh? A moan? Either way, it’s good. “I--like this. This is good, we ought to. Take this slow.”

“Not too slow, I hope.” Finn prods on, because he needs to talk, he needs to make sure it’s okay. What if he identifies something wrong? Gets an expression wrong? What if Poe isn’t enjoying it as much as he thinks he is? 

Poe’s fingers slide down from Finn’s face, though, across his shoulders, then down his biceps, brushing against scars from years past. He seems to read Finn’s face perfectly and easily, like he’s memorized the dictionary of facial expressions out there in the galaxy, and can easily identify what his lover is thinking and feeling. “Perfect. It’s all perfect, Finn, really. Everything.”

Everything. Finn lets out a heavy breath between his nostrils, and his efforts against Poe’s cock increases. He hopes it’s not chafing, but Poe seems more than content with it all. Even then, Finn spits in his hand a couple times, and switches them, using more dampness. 

They go on like that, sharings breaths, kissing and touching, until Poe gasps and spills over Finn’s hand, and Finn gets to feel the miraculous way the man seems to shake under his fingers, the way his climax overtakes him. He kisses him through it, swallowing his every noise and breath, and eventually stops stroking him when he imagines the man might be oversensitive. 

Their lips part from each other when Poe opens his eyes, breath coming out and in through his nose, and he gives Finn’s face a good once over, looking deliciously pink after their actions. Finn’s smiling, because, just like kissing, that was _fun._ He liked that. With the added emotion, the love, even a sexual action so basic and gentle was fun, and he enjoyed the experience far more than he’s ever enjoyed any sexual act before. 

“That was amazing.” Poe says, breathless for no reason at all.

“It was just a handjob.” Finn says, despite himself. It was just a handjob, but here he is, waxing on about how much he loved giving it.

“I loved it.” Poe counters back, that smile that could win medals in itself shining.

Finn attempts a pout, but with his mediocre knowledge of facial expressions and the smile peeking through, he doubts it comes out right. “That’s only because you love me.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Poe retorts, pressing another kiss to Finn’s lips. Again, they’re smiling into it, and it never really gets anywhere. And yet, they enjoy it far more than anything. When they break away, they’re still grinning stupidly. “I should return the favor.” Poe says, and his hands glide down from Finn’s biceps to his waist, and then further. 

“I can’t say I disagree with that offer.”  
Poe leads him into position, kissing and pressing and pulling Finn’s underwear off, until Finn sits on the edge of the cot, and then there Poe is, on his knees before him. Finn inhales expressively, a gasp if you will. He didn’t know what was in Poe’s mind from his face, but he definitely knows this postion. The thought of Poe’s lips around his cock, something he’s definitely considered before, fantasized about before, leaves his mouth watering and desperate for more kisses. “What happened to going slow?”

“This is slow for me, babe, trust me.” Poe says, and somehow Finn finds it in himself to be embarrassed when Poe touches him with his fingers. He’s almost painfully hard, but in the life of a Stormtrooper physical pain is barely notable, and he’s too distracted by his own adoration to let his desperation and need cloud Poe’s enjoyment. But now, that the focus is all on him, he feels, in part, that he has something to be nervous about, something to be embarrassed about. His erection curves out, prominent and flushed just so against his skin, and he shudders when he can feel heavy breaths against the head. 

He doesn’t linger on just what that means, and how fast Poe normally goes with his conquests when he man’s lips finally settle against him, licking and sucking and doing things he barely even knows how to go about describing. Poe has been--an introduction to the world of love for him. Sex acts have always seem so simple, so mechanical. That’s how the first Order viewed them, simple, looked down upon, but necessary. He recalls the first time he did it, and seeing the figure of him and the female soldier’s body in the mirror that lay in her assigned room. They looked like droids, automatons, attempting to recreate a scene that meant nothing to each other. 

But then, Poe. Poe was the real thing. Finn could feel adoration lying heavy in the air, only tasting heavier of love with every gasp he took. He didn’t know sex could be so emotional, and yet cerebral, and yet so physical at the same time. It was just so much, more feeling than he ever expected his body to feel. He’s only connection negative emotions with this strength before, the way he’ll gasp in terror or sob in embarrassment. But Poe’s feeling was as deep as the rest, as violent in the way is invaded his bloodstream, but lustful, a slow creeping of love and true arousal. 

He loses himself there, in the love and the lust and the intensity of Poe’s tongue against him. He forgets the words he mutters, forgets the feeling of Poe’s hair between his fingers, forgets everything except the lust he feels in his very own core.

He doesn’t remember if he gives Poe any warning before he climaxes into his mouth, but the man doesn’t seem to mind, only swallowing him down more when he does. Then Finn needs to shut his eyes, waves of stimulation flooding through his body before he shudders and needs to pull Poe off him, fearing he may drown in the pleasure.

“You _really_ liked that.” Poe states, like it’s a fact. His voice sounds gruff, but maybe that’s only because Finn’s so used to the far sounds of his own moans and the wet noises of Poe’s mouth. 

He replies, “What gave me away?” And lets his mouth split in a smile, before he puts his hands on Poe’s shoulders. “Come back up here. Let me hold you.”

And he does, or rather they do, laying back together on the bed together. Poe wiggles from his pants, but tucks himself back into his underwear, not wanting to be naked. Finn feels as if he should be the same, but after that, he doesn’t know if he minds his own nudity, not after the way Poe worshipped it so thoroughly. He lays down on his side, and pulls his arms around Poe, who returns the gesture, facing each other. 

Poe presses a short kiss against his lips before he speaks. “I don’t not like the scars.” He says, finally. “They’re definitely not what I expected.” Surprisingly, Finn’s _paranoia_ (he still imagines the words in Jess’ smooth voice) doesn’t see this as something to worry over, but maybe that’s with the fatigue in his own body and mind. “They each tell a story, you say?”

“Some kind of story. Things I found important at some point in my life.” Many of them weren’t even that important, like the one he pointed out before, schedules. Little things. Zeroes has a crush on Seven Tee. The towels in shower 5-Mern were the softest. He picks out a particularly fun one to recall. “This one, here.” He says, and points to one, written in the pictography language they came up with. It was a swirly few letters, so different against the sharp Basic and Aurebesh letters on his body. “We had a simulation once, me and the rest of the fire squad, that went sour. Not the mission, I always managed to pull them out of it. But the simulation control bugged, and the life support system failed for the members of the team that had been ‘downed.’ See, they make it so when we’re downed in a simulation, that our life support goes down, so we can’t try and get back up, and our helmets and armor holds us down. It malfunctioned.”

“So...they all died?” Poe asks, enveloped in the story. It reminds Finn of when he was a child, and the old troopers would show the children their scars, and recount stories of it. Poe’s eyes are wide, obviously displeased with the horror story, but that was the First Order for you.

“Yeah.” Finn feels like this isn’t as shocking to him as it should be. “Thankfully, none of the FNs under my care died then.”

“The FNs?” Poe questions.

“Do you remember my serial number?” Poe shakes his head, and kisses him again. Finn can’t figure out why. “I was FN-2187. I was a part of a whole squadron of FNs, that’s how they divide us all. Me and FN-2000, FN-2003, and FN-2199. Zeroes is 2000, Nines is 99, and Slip is 2003.” 

“That’s a pretty large gap.” Poe states. “Between the numbers, I mean. Two-thousand one-hundred and eighty-seven to two-thousand one-hundred and ninety-nine.” The numbers sound so foreign on Poe’s tongue, before Finn realizes that they’re just so familiar to his own years instead. 

“Those are the ones that died. Some in that simulation, others--well--in other events.”

Maybe Poe senses that he doesn’t want to talk about those events, or maybe he’s just not interested, but he doesn’t press on. His fingers come and settle on Finn’s leg, and he taps his fingers against the raw scar of “Slip” in Basic. “This one. You said it was for Slip.”

“I let him die. I don’t know if you saw it, back on Jakku. He was killed.” He doesn’t know if Poe was the very one to kill him. He could be. He might’ve. They seem to realize this at the same time, and Poe takes his hands off the sensitive spot on Finn’s leg, like he’s ashamed to touch there. “I don’t blame whoever shot him. Anyway, I’m the reason he died. He was--slow. Weak, I guess. Just the type of ‘trooper Hux hates. He lagged behind, _slip _-ped up, you know.” He lets himself smile at that, though he’s not sure if he’s really happy. “I saved him every time. And then, when Phasma told me I wasn’t permitted to again, he ended up dead.”__

__It’s a sob story, one he didn’t really want to tell. Slip had been close to him, the man was just soft, and Finn didn’t hate that. Maybe Hux called it weak, but, Finn didn’t think it was bad. Not weak, just soft. And that could be comforting, sometimes, just like the softness of Poe’s unmarked chest. “I’m sure it’s not your fault.” Poe tries to say, but Finn at least knows what that means. At least he knows that intonation. There’s no way to know for sure, how much it really is his fault._ _

__Poe kisses him, deeply, and it goes on longer than Finn feels like he remembers it being. Hands so familiar to grasping the controls of a ship stroke over his body, until they find a swallow, scar, soft and small. “And this one?” Poe says, their lips releasing._ _

__Finn smiles, and kisses him again, just a short press of lips. “That one was from Hux’s cat.”_ _

__“Hux’s _what?”__ _

__“A housecat. Pittin type. Orange.” Finn says, trying to keep himself from smiling._ _

__Poe doesn’t stop his smile, though, and just at the sight of it, does Finn let his own teeth show. “You have to been kidding me. The First Order has a pittin on board?”_ _

__“All truth here. And guess who had to dispose of its waste.” At that, Poe laughs, and clutched Finn closer into his arms._ _

__“A pittin. I’m sure we can find some way to use that against them. You should tell General Leia.” It was strange to her the woman’s first name, even now, Finn can’t think of her as anything but Princess General Leia Organa of the Resistance. It’s so simple here. Everyone had first names, just like Finn did now. No masks, no last names of importance, just the there and now, and no need to etch memories into their skin lest their minds get erased._ _

__“Maybe I will, if I ever get out of bed.” He feels some type of reply to that on Poe’s lips, but he shuts it out as he kisses him again, and he lets Poe’s fingers against his arms and chest do the talking, the silent discussion of memories and the hands that read them passing from skin to palm._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> also, check out my star wars sideblog at smallfinn.tumblr.com  
> or my main blog at nicelegsdaisypukes.tumblr.com


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